Distributions

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Distributions at LinuxWorld 2008

I went to LinuxWorld last week primarily to lead a Birds of a Feather discussion, the title of which was "Which Linux Distribution is Right for Me?" It seemed to be generally well received, though a few people left early after it became clear that there were no flashy slides, nor was I going to reveal the "One True Linux Distribution". I don't believe there is one true distribution, just as there is no one true use for Linux. So I pointed people to The List and we talked about a few distributions that might meet some specific needs that people had.

There was plenty of time left over to walk around the Expo, looking for distribution booths on the show floor. Oracle had a big booth to the right of the entrance. Access was on the other side.

The Linux Garage was an interesting place, full of various embedded devices. Did you know that the Open Moko phones are currently available with three versions of its OS? Version 2007.2 is the oldest. It uses gtk and supports caller dialing contacts. The ASU 2008.8 OS is based on Qt. The latest and greatest Open Moko system is the FSO (FreeSmartphone.Org) which makes use of gtk, Qt and Python. Next up will be a version using Trolltech's Qtopia for the GreenPhone.

The NSLU2 comes with Debian or OpenWRT. OpenWRT is also used in the FON wireless router and the Meraki wireless router. The later can be managed via a web interface. OpenWRT will also run on ASUS WL520GU and the Gateway Avila, but it is not installed by default.

Canonical had a large booth. In half they were showing off Netbooks, with the Ubuntu remix for the Netbook. The other half had various business partners showing off the software packages that were available on Ubuntu. Ubuntu was also the distribution of choice at the Installfest. Xubuntu was used on the really low memory machines. Untangle was a major sponsor of the Installfest.

Linpus and gOS has crowded booths, so I didn't get very close. I did find some pictures from the gOS booth. Fedora and openSUSE had booths in the .org pavilion, where I stopped for a quick chat but didn't get any pictures. Fedora had computers from Shuttle, with Fedora pre-installed. openSUSE's mlasars had this to say about LWE 2008. Linux Magazine's Joe Casad interviewed Fedora's Karsten Wade (video) and Karsten had some reflections on his blog. I also stopped at the Vyatta booth. I reviewed Vyatta briefly several years ago, but at that time the distribution didn't do DHCP protocol. The new version of Vyatta does DHCP, VPN and lots of other things. Vyatta recently announced a firewall/router product that they plan to start shipping in a few weeks.

Foresight joined up with Shuttle Computers at their booth. Small and quiet Shuttle computers were also at the Fedora booth. Shuttle will install Foresight or Fedora (and probably other distributions) if you like. Foresight is based on rPath and has been known for closely following the GNOME desktop. It seems that Foresight is now planning on a KDE edition.

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New Releases

BLFS-6.3-rc3 has been released!

Beyond Linux From Scratch has released the third release candidate of BLFS 6.3. The final release is due August 24th. See the release notes for more information.

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Distribution News

Debian GNU/Linux

Bits from the GNU/kFreeBSD porters

Click below for a status update on the Debian GNU/FreeBSD port. This port consists of two architectures: kfreebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64.

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Bits from the DPN editors

Alexander Reichle-Schmehl reports on the status of the Debian Project News. "It's more or less four months since I proposed to resurrect our newsletter. We already released eight issues of the "Debian Project News" and work for the ninth issue has already started. So I guess it's time for a small "state of the DPN" speech."

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DebConf8 video streams available

Streaming video of talks from the 8th annual Debian conference (DebConf8) are now available. The conference is being held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, August 10-16.

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RFA: The Debian Jr. project

The Debian Jr. project is in such of a new leader. The current leader, Ben Armstrong writes: "The time has come for me to give up the Debian Jr. project for someone else to lead. While I still have a clear vision for it, my heart has not been in the work for some time. It has been in "maintenance mode" for some years with no forward motion."

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Fedora

Fedora Board Recap 2008-AUG-05

The August 5th meeting of the Fedora Board looked at Codecs, Trademark Guidelines, board elections, Privacy Policy, Package Reviews and more.

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9 + 5 things you'll get with Fedora 10

Fabrizio Balliano lists nine accepted features, plus five proposed features in Fedora 10. "Fedora 10 will be released on 28th October 2008, let's take a look at what some of the upcoming features, 9 of them have been accepted by the team, 5 more are still in the "proposed" state. If you want you can check the whole list."

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Gentoo Linux

Gentoo announces the final removal of php-4*

August 8th is the date of official discontinuation of any work on php-4 (even security-related) on the upstream side. On gentoo, =dev-lang/php-4* has already been masked for security reasons since Oct 19th 2007, along with everything which depends on it. "Removal from our tree was initially announced for Jan 1st 2008, but we decided to postpone it until today to give users even more time to migrate."

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Ubuntu family

Minutes from the Ubuntu Technical Board, 2008-07-15

The minutes from the July 15 meeting of the Ubuntu Technical Board are available. Topics include cdrtools, DKMS, Filesystem checking / AutoFsck, Technical Board membership and more.

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Minutes from the Ubuntu Technical Board, 2008-07-29

The minutes from the July 29 meeting of the Ubuntu Technical Board are available. The discussion on cdrtools continues.

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network manager 0.7 bug reporting + 3G (hardware) testing

Alexander Sack reports on the addition of Network Manager 0.7 to the Ubuntu Intrepid repository, with a call for 3g testing. "Now that Network Manager 0.7 has entered the archive, I'd like to ask you to test your 3g hardware with it and report your findings to the 3G Hardware page on the wiki. We want to hear about all results - good and bad ones. Just remember to open a bug in launchpad and link it to your result on that wiki page."

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Distribution Newsletters

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter #103

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter for August 9, 2008 covers: Intrepid Alpha-4 ahead, Ubuntu Studio looking for help, SRU needs you, New Ubuntu Members, MOTU news, Ubuntu Kernel Next, BarCamp Chicago, Ubuntu Love Day Manila, Encrypted Private Directories, Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop, Unison, Alfresco Labs, Internet Labs in Ecuador, Linux Foundation AptChecker tool, Ubuntu and RepRap, and much more.

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PCLinuxOS Magazine August 2008

PCLinuxOS Magazine for August 2008 looks at Linux Media Players - Round up, Speed Up Firefox, Gnome User Guide, Chapter 5- Kde User Guide, and more. It's available in PDF or HTML.

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Fedora Weekly News #138

The Fedora Weekly News for August 11, 2008 has an article by Oisin Feeley titled =Solving the Unsynchronized Release of Package Dependencies=, plus Firefox Mouse Woes, Bugzilla Overhauled, Feature Proposal: Provers, rpmgrok Announced, and much more.

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DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 265

The DistroWatch Weekly for August 11, 2008 is out. "While interacting with the Linux user community through DistroWatch is an enjoyable activity, it can't beat face-to-face encounters with real Linux users and user groups. In this week's feature story, your DistroWatch maintainer meets the members of LoLiTa, a highly active free software user's group from French Polynesia. In the news section, the openSUSE community offers version 11.0 live CDs with KDE 3.5, Xandros announces the end of Linspire and a new Debian-based beginning for Freespire, PC-BSD continues rapid alpha testing of the upcoming version 7, and the OpenSolaris user and developer community is rocked by a "messy divorce" at Blastwave.org, a major repository of Solaris and OpenSolaris packages. Also in the news, an update on the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" and a preliminary feature list of the forthcoming Fedora 10. Finally, we are pleased to announce that the recipient of the July 2008 DistroWatch donation is Linux Mint."

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Distribution meetings

Announcing ENOS 2008

ENOS stands for "Encontro Nacional de openSUSE", a Portuguese expression which can be translated to "National openSUSE Meeting". ENOS 2008 will be held in Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Porto, Portugal on Saturday, September 6, 2008.

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